


all the devils that you don't know

by Sanamun



Series: Seaglass [4]
Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: 5+1 Things, Complicated Relationships, Disabled Character, F/F, F/M, Grief, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Mental Health Issues, Neurodivergent Annie, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Trans Annie, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Victors Have Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 21:26:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9290264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanamun/pseuds/Sanamun
Summary: 5 things that made Enobaria fall in love with Annie Cresta, and the one time they talked about their feelings like grownups.





	

**1 - The 70th Games**

 

Enobaria has been a victor for almost a decade, and a mentor nearly as long. She and Cashmere watch the tribute interviews together, the blonde keeping a sarcastic running commentary on everything from the tributes’ stylists’ choices to their survival chances, while Enobaria makes a mental tally of names, strategies, and potential alliances.

District 1,  a beautiful but emotionally distant girl named Adora, with long near-white hair and a jagged scar running from her temple to her jawline. A dark-skinned boy called Velvet who talks like every overenthusiastic games academy graduate with no sense of what real danger feels like. So far, so typical, not that she would tell Cashmere that.

Her own District 2 has Ajax and Topaz, childhood friends who volunteered together. Enobaria privately worries that their affection for eachother will hold them back in the arena. She can only do so much.

District 4 has Luka Brigham, a chubby 15 year old non-volunteer who will end up as cannon fodder for the career pack, and-

Ayden Cresta, son of Lorelai Cresta, the victor who came before Haymitch, well known for having responded to the trauma of her games by becoming a paranoid obsessive whose child has probably been able to kill since he could walk, and whom the capitol will deeply want to win so they can have their first legacy victor. Great. That’s exactly what Enobaria needs right now.

When interviewed, Ayden’s answers hover somewhere between perfect capitol doll and something a bit too sarcastic, a bit too defiant, a bit too _go fuck yourself you hypocritical capitol dick, if you cared you wouldn’t be sending me into the hunger games._ He’s pretty in an almost feminine way; dusky brown skin, freckles, sea-green eyes, slender yet toned figure under not enough clothes thanks to the efforts of Valora Roxen, a mediocre at best stylist who got lucky with Finnick Odair and has been trying the same trick every year since.

“I hope he dies in the arena,” says Cashmere, and she’s drinking already and probably high as a fucking kite as well but Enobaria doesn’t have the heart to call her out on it, “He’s too…” she searches for the right word, “He’s too much a person. They haven’t broke him yet.”

Awkwardly worded, but Enobaria watches the tribute on screen make a sarcastic remark about Capitol food and laugh to himself afterwards, and she can’t disagree.

 

  1. **\- Victory**



 

Ayden is actually Annie, as she makes _very_ clear in her post-games interview, right after she insults Caesar Flickerman’s hair. 

(He actually looks _offended_ , and it’s the best thing Enobaria has seen in eight long years.)

Enobaria actually meets Annie Cresta for the first time in the Capitol after her victory tour, where the younger victor sits glaring at a glass of electric blue whisky as though longing to drown it, too, in the flood that had ended her games.

“How do you do it?” Annie asks, green eyes wild and angry and searching for answers Enobaria can’t give her. “You were a career too, right? And now you’re… this.” she’s no Finnick or Anwyn or Obsidian, but Enobaria has no shortage of Capitol admirers herself. She knows this, and she accepts it, because that’s easier.

“Don’t you get sick of doing what Snow wants you to?”

“Rough night, huh?” The district 4 victor doesn’t reply. Enobaria sighs, takes a seat beside Annie. She is objectively not the right person to be having this conversation with, yet here they are regardless.

“Shit, Cresta, of course I get sick of it. That’s not the point. What we want? Doesn’t matter.”

“They all think I’m crazy already.” It’s not a statement Enobaria can refute, there’s something just plain _off_ about Panem’s newest victor, something Enobaria doesn’t have words for in the way she holds herself, in her awkward giggles and the pauses in her conversation and her faraway sea-green eyes. Annie Cresta the mad victor, who laughs at nothing and talks to the voices in her head; who speaks of ghosts and gods and fate. Who once told the Capitol that she was the ocean itself.

“Maybe I can use that,” Annie says, pensively, and not really to Enobaria. “If I can just convince them I’m the dangerous type of mad. Like in my games. With Adora.” She puts down her drink and mimes squishing something between her fingers. Enobaria shudders, remembering the girl whose eyes Annie had gouged out in the arena. But then. The boy who had cut off her district partner’s head. Finnick Odair spearing his allies on a golden trident. Enobaria herself ripping out an opponent's throat with her teeth.

She has no right to judge. They’re all monsters.

A week later, Enobaria sees Annie again. On a screen, naked, with a capitol man’s blood smeared on her cheek and a look in her eyes that promises pain to anyone who crosses her again. That says, _this one isn’t for sale._

It’s the only time Enobaria can remember a victor going against the rules this badly. Annie broke the 70th hunger games, and she broke this game, too. She’ll pay for it in ways Enobaria would never be able to face, but in that moment, neither of them cares.

Annie Cresta is like the ocean she came from in a storm, something Enobaria has only seen in pictures. She’s a little terrifying.

But beautiful, too.

 

  1. **\- The 73rd Games**



 

Annie Cresta doesn’t return to the Capitol after the incident on her victory tour for nearly three years; the Capitolites, as a whole, seem to be trying to forget her existence. She’s safe purely because she’s inconvenient. Because she makes the Capitol too uncomfortable to want her.

Annie Cresta isn’t like the other victors. That flood in her arena - the one _she caused_ , when she decided _enough was enough_ and thought she’d drown them all to deny the Capitol their chance at a good games - something about it damaged her mind. Enobaria isn’t a doctor, she doesn’t know the specifics. But she’s _strange_ (impulsive, unpredictable, erratic, withdrawn- all the things victors shouldn’t be), and she’s forgetful and she sees things that aren’t there and has screaming meltdowns in public places and doesn’t move quite right and covers her ears with her hands because everything’s too loud, or something, and Enobaria shouldn’t be jealous but she is.

Because Annie, like Wiress before her, is broken enough to be free.

She comes back for the 73rd, though, alongside Finnick Odair. Unsurprising, really, because Mags was getting too old and fragile to mentor, and most of Four’s other victors disappeared when they were no longer young and pretty enough to be entertaining. It was probably just Annie’s turn.

When Finnick is there, Annie seems at peace. She laughs easily, flaps her hands, rambles on about people and places Enobaria doesn’t know, and maybe neither does Finnick, who gazes at her with such adoration that Enobaria can’t help but feel jealous. She’s not sure why. Maybe because even Crazy Cresta has found someone to care for her, and all Enobaria has is nameless faceless capitol creeps and a village full of unapproachable ex-careers who didn’t tell her, when she volunteered, that the lucky ones don’t come back from the games. Maybe it’s because the half-mad woman has a very pretty smile, and Enobaria isn’t used to victors being happy.

Of course, the amount of dates Snow makes Finnick go on even during games season means that, often, Annie is left in mentor central to watch Four’s tributes alone, a look of intense concentration on her brown, freckled face. This is, to Enobaria’s mind, a problem. It isn’t that she doesn’t think Annie can handle it, Enobaria doesn’t believe the Capitol’s line that she doesn’t understand what’s going on around her for a second. If Cresta was as far gone as all that, they wouldn’t be making her mentor. But Annie knows nothing of this side of the games, not really. She could teach a kid to fight, Enobaria doesn’t doubt that - she’s seen Annie’s games - but she’s never had to find sponsors or figure out when to send her kids supplies, and she seems, well, to be blunt, she seems lost.

More so than she always does, that is.

So Enobaria breaks the unspoken rule to leave the mad girl from Four to her own district's victors _(she’s not like us, and she’s not our problem)_ and teaches Annie Cresta hunger games mentoring 101. It’s just pragmatic, really. It’s not as if she’s crazy enough to get out of it forever.

Four wins the games that year for the first time since Annie herself, and Annie shrieks with laughter and high-fives Enobaria for helping her. It’s not the way victors are supposed to act. It’s almost childlike, really.

It’s also goddamn adorable.

But victors don’t get crushes, and Annie’s halfway to batshit insane, and disobedient and angry at the capitol in ways that Enobaria can’t be sure are worth the effort, especially not for a career ( _this is not their rebellion)_ and, also, in love with Finnick Odair (everyone Enobaria has ever met is at least a little in love with Finnick Odair), so she really shouldn’t intrude.

She’s fine with this. Really.

 

  1. **\- The Capitol**



 

Annie Cresta is crying, Enobaria can hear her through the walls. She’s not surprised, exactly. She’s being tortured, after all.

Sometimes she cries out Finnick’s name, sobbing apologies, promising to save him. Enobaria isn’t sure what they’re doing to Finnick. Isn’t sure if Finnick’s really here at all, or just a Capitol trick they’re using to torment Annie’s mind, as though they haven’t done that enough already.

They haven’t really hurt Enobaria yet. Why would they? She wasn’t a rebel (she didn’t know Cresta was, either. She doesn’t actually know much about her, Enobaria suddenly realizes). She can’t give them information, and she won’t help them break the others.

(She’s not _evil_ , despite what the likes of Katniss Everdeen seem to believe.)

She stays in her cell. Nobody touches her. Sometimes they bring her food. Sometimes it’s hours, and sometimes it’s days. Mostly, its days. There are worse things. Enobaria knows that. She’s a victor.

Days pass (Hours? Weeks? Months? There’s no real way to tell).

Enobaria is taken to Annie’s cell. It’s the second time she’s seen the younger victor naked, and neither of them have been under the best of circumstances.

“Don’t hurt her!” Annie cries, green eyes filled with fear and regret and a quiet kind of strength Enobaria forgets she has. “She has nothing to do with this!”

Enobaria tries to make sense of Annie’s words, mind foggy and slow from exhaustion. _She_ has nothing to do with this? Meaning Annie _does_?

Annie darts across the room in a flash of skinny limbs and tangled dark hair, trying to pull Enobaria out of the peacekeepers’ grasp. Fails. Gets knocked to the floor and held down and-

“Run!” Annie screams at Enobaria through tears, and she’s surprised to realise that she _can,_ that both of the peacekeepers are on Annie. So she does, sprinting through the corridors with her heart in her throat and stumbling into the too-bright light of the Capitol with Annie Cresta’s screams on repeat in her head.

It's only later that Enobaria understands that they _let_ her leave. The Capitol doesn’t do things like this by accident.

It was a test of their loyalty to one another, and Enobaria failed.

What can she say? Victors always do have too developed a survival instinct for their own good.

 

  1. **\- Aftermath**



 

Panem is free and Finnick Odair is dead and Enobaria is in what was District Four, watching Annie Cresta poledance on a lamppost. Nothing makes sense anymore. 

Annie grips the pole between her thighs and leans back so that the tips of her wet hair brush the dirty ground, and it's magical and confusing and a little hot and deeply, profoundly sad and Enobaria doesn’t know what to think. Can’t think, because she’s drunk, because that’s what you do when you’ve got a lifetime of trauma and too much money and nothing but time to destroy yourself in.

Annie is gently hitting her head against the lamppost, green eyes closed, oversized woolen sweater-dress falling down over her stomach revealing her underwear, something she seems not to care about. Enobaria hears a sobbed reference to Finnick and remembers that, oh yeah, Annie lost her _husband_ to that stupid goddamn revolution.

“Cresta?” Enobaria calls, very gently, and then, because they’re past that, “Annie? Come on, Ann, get down so we can go home. Its fucking cold.”

Enobaria had returned to Four as Annie’s caretaker, because neither of their districts had victors left and Annie couldn’t be left alone or she’d forget to eat and because Enobaria couldn’t face living in Two’s victors village on her own.

Which of them is looking after the other, really?

Annie swings so she’s the right way up but doesn’t let go of the pole, leaning against it with a sigh.

“Finn’s dead.” she murmurs, the rainwater of Four’s last storm of the summer clinging to her eyelashes, “So’s Mama and Orca and Mags and Kian and Tressa. All gone gone gone back to the ocean floor.”

Enobaria doesn’t question the odd statement, not knowing much about Four’s spirituality but knowing Annie well enough to not expect an actual explanation either.

“I know, Ann. I know. I’m sorry.”

Annie lets go of the light, stumbling into Enobaria’s arms. She laughs bitterly, and Enobaria doesn’t even know how to respond to that. Tears, panic, self-destructive alcoholism- Enobaria could have dealt with that. She’s a victor. It’s what they do. But not this. Not Annie Cresta swinging on streetlights and laughing about her dead family. Enobaria is both out of her depth and the only person left who could ever get it.

Annie pushes herself off Enobaria and runs, barefoot, giggling, down the deserted street.

“Where are you going?” Enobaria calls behind her, because really, this girl is a headache waiting to happen and she just _can’t_ sometimes.

“I’m gonna go drink, cry, sleep, and get laid,” Annie replies, matter-of-fact, “Not necessarily in that order. You’re welcome to join me, ‘Baria.”

And so she does.

 

**+1 - Resolution**

 

Annie Cresta swings her legs off the pier, head resting on Enobaria’s shoulder. 

“So.” She begins, “We ever gonna talk about what happened between us the other month?”

The other month: Annie drunk and dancing, Annie laughing hysterically against Enobaria’s chest, Annie screaming Finnick and Lorelai’s names to the ocean, the feel of Annie’s scarred brown skin under Enobaria’s hands and the way the oceanborn girl had gasped and moaned against her neck-

“You’re blushing,” Annie interjects, and, oh, was she? That’s unfortunate.

“I like you, ‘Baria. I loved Finnick - I still love Finnick - but I like you. It’s not a mutually exclusive thing. You’re nice, but you won’t admit it. And your smile is cute. Your turn.”

“I think you’re magic, Ann.” Enobaria says, honestly, because Annie’s some kind of crazy sea pixie come to life and she makes Enobaria forget how to breathe, but-

“Is this okay?”

“Huhh?” Annie sounds legitimately confused, “Does Two have problems with two girls being together? I thought that was just an outlying districts thing. Or because I'm not actually a girl? Anyway, Snow is gone, we can do what we want now. Who will stop us?”

“No! Not- not that. Not because you’re a girl, or, or whatever-” Annie was a girl. Everyone knew Annie was a girl, whatever was under her clothes. “Because you’re, y’know. Because you’re you.”

“Because I’m mad, oh look, I said what you couldn’t, right?” Annie sighs, looks away from Enobaria’s gaze, “It’s called brain hypoxia, from where I nearly drowned in the games. At least that’s what my paperwork says. I wasn’t meant to look but I did. It doesn’t mean I can’t do this. I’m not a child, ‘Baria. You’re not like the Capitol.”

“You sure?” Enobaria chooses to ignore Annie’s last sentence, that being a conversation neither of them had the energy for. “About us, I mean?”

“Of course I’m fucking sure,” Annie leans in, kisses Enobaria, then pulls away, stepping backwards into the water like the mermaid Enobaria half-believes she is, “I’m not asking for us to get married or anything. Now come swim with me.”

Enobaria follows Annie’s siren call, like she always had before.  
  
And that’s how, slowly, they learned to rebuild a life.

**Author's Note:**

> While Annie's in-universe symptoms are quite hard to place logically - she seems to have some combination of trauma, psychosis, and neurological problems - I felt as though hypoxia was quite a fitting conclusion given her presentation and personal history. Hypoxia is the result of the brain not getting enough oxygen - in Annie's case due to near-drowning - and while symptoms vary the more common ones include short-term memory issues, movement problems, problems with attention, insomnia, hallucinations, and erratic behaviour. It does not generally affect a person's intelligence or judgement, and any perceived consent issues are purely in Enobaria's mind.


End file.
